The Breakfast Table: Jeffrey Goldberg and Jack Shafer
An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.
By Jeffrey Goldberg
Slate, February 9, 2001
[Read this article at Slate’s website]
From: Jack Shafer
Subject: Pols, the Press, and the Sad Bastard Story
Posted Monday, Feb. 5, 2001, at 7:46 AM ET
Dearest Goldberg,
During the campaign, the press busted the presidential candidates every time they harvested a mawkish anecdote from some specific sad bastard’s life to make one of their policy pitches. (Often the sad bastard was strategically placed in the audience to give the TV citizenry that throat-clogging Oprah moment.) I cringed whether it was George Bush demonstrating his compassionate conservatism in one of the debates by misting up over the Texas convict who asked him who really cared about his jailed ass or Al Gore jawboning against pricey pharmaceuticals by complaining that his mother-in-law was paying three times as much for the same arthritis drug that her dog Shiloh consumed (a claim that turned out not to be true).
Politicians rely on cheap, emotional anecdotes for obvious reasons. Theirs is a cheap and emotional business. But what’s to explain our press comrades’ overreliance on the same technique? Scanning the morning papers I find two sad bastard ledes without even searching. My friend Rachel Zimmerman begins her Page One Wall Street Journal story about drug patent extensions with the up-close and personal story of “Mary Robinson, a Philadelphia X-ray technologist,” who enrolled her 7-month-old baby in a drug-testing program in return for a $50 Toys “R” Us gift certificate. It’s a fine story about the politics of patent extension, but the anecdote never pays off. Baby Robinson pops up only one more time, deep, deep in the story, where we find out that the diluted drug she was fed in the drug trial cured her indigestion.
The Los Angeles Times similarly frames its Israeli election piece around one everyman, Tuvia Metzer, a “pro-peace Israeli leftist.” As a pro-war Israeli rightist, you’re surely peeved by this story to no end. But what puts the starch in my drawers is the story’s artificial dependence on a character who could have been recruited from central casting. He’s going to vote for Ehud Barak, but “only after weeks of agonizing inner debate.” Metzer doesn’t really matter to this routine campaign story except to give it the quick stink of flesh and blood. (Do you think Shiloh will bark for Barak or speak for Sharon? And you, my dual-citizen buddy? Do you cast absentee ballots in Israeli elections? Who’s your guy?)
As long as we’re on the subject of cheap anecdotes, here’s mine. I’m off this morning to visit an “oral and maxillofacial surgeon” who wants to carve a chunk of flesh out of the inside of my mouth. It seems that after years of accidentally biting the inside of my cheek with my right wisdom teeth, I’ve developed a benign (I assume) little growth that my regular dentist wants removed. Dentists love my mouth the way mechanics love the engine compartment of a 1957 Chevy: more room to bang around in than the Millennium Dome. When I return I’ll probably be stitched, medicated, and sedated, so take it easy on me. (Slate readers should know in advance of your plot to disturb the comity that they’ve come to expect from the “Breakfast Table” with your particular brand of big noise.)
Hey, do you think I’ll get a $50 Toys “R” Us gift certificate from the surgeon if I’m a good boy?
Over to you,
Jack
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: Who Would You Vote For?
Posted Monday, Feb. 5, 2001, at 10:30 AM ET
Shafer,
I can’t believe it. You’re setting a new land-speed record for pissing me off.
For the record, I am not a “pro-war Israeli rightist.” I am a bleeding heart, give-peace-eight-or-10 chances, liberal, guilt-ridden American-Israeli Jew who, by the way, believes that war is coming (Wednesday at 8 a.m., if my latest calculations are correct).
And no, you’re not going to get me to play the Jack Shafer game, that “Shame the reporter into revealing publicly who he would vote for” shtick of yours. I will not answer that question on principle and also because I genuinely don’t know the answer.
I am not alone in this. There is an ocean of difference between an Israeli election and an American one. By October of last year, I believed that those American voters who were still declaring themselves to be undecided were morons. That or they loved seeing their names in David Broder stories. In Israel, it’s different. The stakes are terribly high, and people are genuinely tortured by the choice they face tomorrow, in part because they know that neither candidate can deliver peace.
Since you’re an honorary Semite, I was wondering who would you vote for. No squirming please, just answer the question.
In re your slice-and-dice job (deserved) on that L.A. Times story, I will tell you an amusing (at least to me) little story: About three months ago, I attended a press briefing in Jerusalem given by Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, who was then the Israeli army’s operations chief. Of course, the reporters, especially the Europeans, were wildly hostile; they were especially critical of Israel’s shoot-to-wound policies. (They had apparently not thought through one of the obvious alternatives.) At one point, an L.A. Times reporter (not the author of today’s story) raised her hand and said, “I’ve only been in the country four days, but it seems to me …”
The rest of her statement was irrelevant; everything you need to know was contained in those 13 words. At another point in the same press briefing, as Eiland was concluding a discussion on Israeli tactics, a Newsweek reporter—not the regular correspondent, but a big-foot parachutist from New York—leaned over to me and, with a smirk on his face, whispered, “Ve haff our vays.” In other words, in this shmuck’s mind, the Israeli army and the Nazis are interchangeable.
Do you get the sense that I have stored up some bile on this subject?
I completely agree with you on something else (How’s that for comity?): Those mawkish, Oprah-style ledes are just everywhere, and they are terrible. But they don’t annoy me as much as another cheap device used daily in even the biggest and best papers: the big-surprise third graph. I haven’t found any today (I will confess I have not had much time to read this morning; I was having maxillofacial surgery—oh, sorry, that was you), but they are also everywhere. These are stories that begin like this:
For Harriet and Murray, domestic life is sheer bliss. They never fight, and they’re deeply in love. Murray helps prepare the evening meals, and Harriet is a compulsive cleaner. They spend their idle moments in each other’s arms, and they may soon decide to have children. They are an average American couple, except for one thing: They’re both monkeys! Harriet and Murray are the newest residents of the National Zoo’s Primate House. …
The problem with these stories—beyond the soul-killing lack of creativity—is that they never surprise. Why? Because the headline invariably reads, “Monkeys Settle Happily Into New Home,” and there’s a big picture next to the story of two goddamn monkeys.
That’s my gripe for the moment. Over to you. And please, no goading. You know I’m easily goaded.
Jeff
From: Jack Shafer
Subject: Going Masada at a Threat to Mother Israel
Posted Monday, Feb. 5, 2001, at 12:51 PM ET
Goldberg,
The good news. The growth inside my cheek: not malignant. However, the rest of my body is shot through with cancer. Oh, I forgot that cancer jokes upset you. And we wouldn’t want to bump that sensitive on/off switch that activates your archeocortex.
The real scoop: The maxillofacial surgeon gave my cheek two minutes of attention that will unpack, I’m sure, into a billable hour, and then told me to come back later for a procedure that lasts only a few nanoseconds. Is this medicine, or is my doctor incredibly lonely? At least they didn’t make me wait several hours to tell me that I’m OK.
Are you leveling with me about not being a “pro-war Israeli rightist”? Didn’t you serve in the Israel Defense Force? What did you do during your hitch, flip potato latkes? Even peace-loving, liberal, guilt-ridden, triple hyphenates like you are ready to go Masada on us the minute somebody threatens Mother Israel. My favorite Masada moment from contemporary Israeli history came during the ‘73 war when the Israelis didn’t care if the, um, regional hostilities escalated to a fissionable U.S./U.S.S.R. event. A world without Israel? your people said. Yeah, we can do that. We can also make burned toast of the galaxy.
So by my accounting, it doesn’t matter whether Barak gets the ball or they call in Sharon from the Shabra/Shatila bullpen. (According to Slate’s “International Papers” column, Barak’s people are already conceding.) The only thing that ever seems to bring quiet (as opposed to peace) to that little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name is an occasional decisive war. Which, my dollar-store wrist watch informs me, is about 10 years overdue.
I’m hoping that our team reading of the daily newspapers will eventually bring us to a discussion of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. Full disclosure: The folks there have been incredibly nice to me over the years, publishing three or four of my pieces. But I have to say that while I appreciate their libertarian/conservative ferociousness, sometimes they drink too deeply from that vat of nut fudge they keep in their offices. Take, for example, the Heather Mac Donald op-ed on today’s page, “Stop Persecuting the Police.”
Persecuting the police? Has Heather Mac Donald never been on the baton side of a cop’s anger before? But the piece isn’t just about what she considers liberal overreaction to naughty cop behavior or racial profiling. Mac Donald regards the race-based job discrimination suits the Justice Department brings against local departments as part of the “war on the police.” Her beef: The feds are suing the Torrance, Calif., department for screening literacy at the ninth-grade level, saying that it’s too high a standard because it has no legitimate job purpose.
For all I know, Mac Donald has nailed the story perfectly, and the Torrance PD is being arbitrarily pushed around by briefcase-toting bureaucrats from D.C. But why is it that op-eds like hers always make me want to reach for Nexis to get the whole story? But never mind the particulars: Mac Donald reserves her real enthusiasm for defending Attorney General John Ashcroft. Goldberg, this guy gives me the creeps. I wouldn’t let the citizens of Kalamazoo County elect him prosecutor, let alone make him the nation’s top cop if I had my way.
But one way in which the Journal editorial page has gotten better: With Clinton gone, so, too, are the impenetrable Whitewater pieces. What do you think the editorial page will end up doing with its Whitewater anthologies?
Love,
Jack
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: Speaking as a Black Man, Which I Am Not
Posted Monday, Feb. 5, 2001, at 2:27 PM ET
Dear Jack,
Sorry about the cancer. Can I have your job? Or at least, can I have your CDs? You single guys have really great CD collections. On the other hand, the last time I visited your house, you had no furniture.
You didn’t answer my question: If you were Jewish, and Israeli, and in Jerusalem right now, who would you vote for, Sharon or Barak? Also, if you were a Jewish settler, what kind of gun would you carry? I’d vote for the AR-15 with a sniper scope. Also, what kind of Jewish woman would you go for? Yemenite? Russian? Or someone with a little bit of Scarsdale in her?
I’m a peace-loving guy, so leave me alone. And I’m going to deny everything you’ve said in reference to the Israeli army. Latke flipping? What do you think: Jews exist on diets of latkes and herring bits? We’re allowed to eat regular food, too. By the way, why all the hostility to Israel? I always thought you saw Masada as a measured response to a particular political reality.
On the subject of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, I, for one, have had bound and encased in rich Morocco leather every single Whitewater editorial. They are masterpieces of clearheaded insightfulness, written without partisan rancor, printed only to educate and enlighten.
I read that Heather Mac Donald piece. She’s a smart person, and some of her City Journal work has been brave, but this piece is typical of her set: no room for nuance or complexity and a nasty subtext, that subtext being, “Charles Murray is right.” Speaking as a black man, which I am not but would on occasion like to be, I will say that the employees of conservative think tanks have absolutely no sense of what it is like to be forced to grab bricks by ill-educated white police officers.
On the other hand, I took the New York City police test a few years ago, and it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m sure it efficiently screens out those unfortunates who were born without brain stems, but that’s about it. I’ll paraphrase one of the most memorable questions: “Officers Rodriguez and Cohen (the test-makers were nothing if not scrupulously inclusive—every hypothetical featured police officers “Johnson and Altieri” or “Ming and O’Reilly” or some other such PBS Kids combination) are patrolling Central Park, and they observe the following four groups of people: a) a group of nuns having a picnic on the lawn; b) a teacher leading a group of schoolchildren to see a fountain; c) a group of young men holding sticks and chains and following in an aggressive manner a group of young women; or d) members of a bird-watching club standing atop a wall. Which group warrants further observation and possible intervention?”
The answer, of course, was “d.”’
The silliest aspect of Mac Donald’s piece was its subhead: “Ashcroft should call off Justice’s Jihad against Cops.”
Jihad? That’s no jihad. I’ll tell you about jihad.
Jeff
From: Jack Shafer
Subject: I Wish They All Could Be Jewish Girls
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001, at 8:27 AM ET
Goldberg,
Answer to Question No. 1 From Your Last Mail: What do you mean, if I were Jewish, who would I vote for? I’m so down with members of the tribe that I’m practically a Jewish whigger, if you catch my drift. Can’t you use your Zionist connections and get me the equivalent of a papal dispensation or an act of Congress and make me a Jew? I don’t think it matters who anybody votes for in this election because Israel could elect Shecky Greene and the war would come anyway and he’d have to pretend to be Ariel Sharon. If you press me, I guess it makes sense to vote for Sharon because he’s an insaniac of the first order and won’t waste any time on peace processing. Or, in a Nixon-goes-to-China move, he might find a way to force everybody to behave. OK, now who would you vote for?
Answer to Question No. 2 From Your Last Mail: What sort of gun would I carry in Israel? One that fires depleted uranium bullets.
Answer to Question No. 3 From Your Last Mail: What kind of Jewish woman would I go for? Let’s restate the question as what sort of Jewish woman wouldn’t I go for? “Well, West Bank girls are hip, I really dig those Uzis they wear. And Scarsdale chicks, with the way they shop, they really impoverish me when I’m up there. The Midwest scrap-dealers’ daughters really make you feel all right. …” You get the idea.
I’m filing a little later than I’m supposed to, so I’m going to sign off now and let you do the heavy lifting and agenda setting today. But I want to revisit the Wall Street Journal editorial page, so here’s your reading assignment: Charles Murray despairing over youth thug culture. (He’s against it.) And also look at the Washington Post’s Page One story about the latest crisis in the D.C. suburbs: starter mansions going up on tiny lots. (I’m for them.)
By the way, have you ever visited rotten.com? Please don’t.
Love,
Jack
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: McMansions and Other Catastrophic Problems of the Wealthy
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001, at 10:14 AM ET
Jack:
OK, heavy lifting. (Thank you, btw, for answering my previous queries. I knew there existed inside that philo-Semitic heart of yours tender feelings for Arik.)
Before I address the Charles Murray piece (with which I sympathize), and the Washington Post “McMansion” piece (with which I don’t), let me point you to perhaps the most inadvertently silly lede of the last news cycle. It appeared atop a Reuters dispatch concerning the dot-com company eToys. I quote, “Struggling Internet toy seller eToys Inc. said on Monday it has told the remaining members of its staff they will be out of a job this April in yet another sign the company’s days may be numbered.”
Note the “may be.” As a practitioner of journalism, I would say that this story is a wee bit too tentative: It is, generally speaking, a warning against future profitability when a company fires ALL its employees.
Onward, to the terrible McMansion epidemic plaguing the suburbs of Washington, D.C. On the one hand, the Washington Post runs the stories of reporters like Kate Boo, who discovered last year that dozens of mentally handicapped people died in mysterious and often horrible circumstances in city-run and taxpayer-funded facilities. On the other hand, it runs stories such as this one, which highlights, if nothing else, the frivolity and callousness of life in suburbia. The earnestly written story, by Peter Whoriskey, opens by quoting a succession of pouty whiners in the wealthy and secluded town of McLean, which is situated across the Potomac from Washington. These people, who are among the luckiest people in the world by virtue of the fact that they get to live in a place like McLean, are moaning about the size of new houses on their block. “They make my house look like a toolshed,” Whoriskey quotes one McLean resident, identified as John Nasrinpay (which if I didn’t generally trust the Washington Post, I would guess is a made-up name) as saying. Another whining neighbor says, “They don’t blend in at all architecturally.”
The story is headlined (at least on the Web site—I’m in a prolonged jihad with the man who delivers the Post in my neighborhood, and I haven’t gotten the paper version in months, nor have I particularly missed it, which I suppose isn’t a good sign for the the future of newsprint), “The Quandary Next Door.”
At the risk of sounding Naderish and communistical, let me mention a few problems that count as “quandaries next door” in much of Washington, D.C.: crack houses; toxic waste sites; abandoned, needle-strewn lots; and city-run group homes for mentally handicapped people who die in said homes at suspiciously high rates.
Me, I don’t particularly care if someone builds a stupendously big house next door to mine. In fact, I wish someone would build a really big house for me. In fact, Jack, you have a really big house: Can I have it, or, at the very least, could you take in one or two of my children?
These McMansions are pretentious and ugly, and they don’t use space well, and they cost too much to heat, and on and on and on, but it really just doesn’t matter.
I go blind with fury when I read about the catastrophic problems of the richest 10 percent. (And the people who are complaining about these houses—not just the ones who are building them—are among the nation’s richest.) I’m sure you’ve heard similar complaints: “My God, another CVS in our neighborhood!” is one that comes to mind. Another manifestation of this terrible and shallow self-absorption is the opposition in the rich precincts of Washington and its suburbs to the building of schools (!) on the grounds that they will cause an increase in traffic.
There is a way to write these stories, which is to viciously mock not only the builders of McMansions but the people who complain about them. But the Washington Post believes it must pander to the ignoble causes of the rich and self-interested grandees who make up the core of its readership.
I’ve gone on too long—I’m out of breath—so I’ll leave Charles Murray to you. Except to say that, when I read his column, I found myself nodding in agreement. Which proves the dictum, I suppose, that a conservative is a liberal with daughters.
Jeff
From: Jack Shafer
Subject: Taking a Power Grinder to Our Values
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001, at 12:30 PM ET
Brother Goldberg,
The suburban ranch-home preservationists who would make McLean, Va., a McMansion-free zone have a lot of gall. As if their unsightly and pathetic 1,500-square-foot ramblers and split-levels and Cape Cods constitute the highest expression of residential architecture! Instead of insisting that any new construction complement “neighborhood scale, characteristic and materials,” these people should thank the McMansion crowd for blocking their cramped little caves from public view.
Goldberg! We must drink deep from the well of life or not at all! (Where did that come from?) My three-bedroom house, which you mention in your last note, fits me—a single guy—like a McMansion does a family of four. I gotta tell you that it’s a treat to prowl my environs, soak up all the space. Why, just the other day while looking for my glasses, I discovered a bedroom I didn’t even know that I had! So how can I begrudge these wonderful people their barns? Actually, my favorite neighborhoods are the kind where enormous houses that make McMansions look like Levitt tracts are packed asshole-to-bellybutton along a broad boulevard. I’m thinking Monument Avenue down in Richmond and parts of Massachusetts Avenue N.W. here in D.C.
The paranoia behind the Virginia McMansion story serves as a fine bookend to another Washington Post
story from last month. Fairfax County wanted to pass a law making it illegal to sleep anywhere but one’s bedroom. The object of the law wasn’t to prevent people from falling asleep during dinner but to keep immigrant families from doubling or tripling up in suburban homes and using basements and dining rooms as bedrooms. (The bill tanked.) Maybe the elegant solution to the McMansion/immigrant problem is a government program to build McMansions for Salvadorans in McLean. The suburban ranch-home preservationists would finally be shamed into silence, and, if the trend continued, McLean might someday be as hospitable as Monument Avenue.
To return to our press criticism theme, the story we’ve been talking about from today’s Washington Post, “The Quandary Next Door,” will surely be followed by another trend piece in a few months, “Making It Small, Making It Real,” about people fleeing their airplane hangers for cozy condos in the District. “Said one newcomer to the District, ‘I’m thinking of selling my two bedroom condo and inviting my brother and his family to move into an efficiency with me and my four kids. It’s not really a family unless you’re bumping into one another all the time.’ “
Now, on to Charles Murray’s column on today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page, “Prole Models.” “We are witnessing the proletarianization of the dominant minority,” Murray writes, echoing the findings of Gertrude Himmelfarb and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who believe our culture has gone to the hot shit-pit of hell.
I’ll give Murray the point about our coarsening culture (I sorta did in my last sentence, didn’t I?), but when exactly was the Golden Age of Manners and Propriety that he longs so nostalgically for? The disco bunny cokehead ’70s? The acid-drenched ’60s? The zip-gun juvenile delinquent ’50s? The zoot suit jazz junkie ’40s? Methinks that Mr. Murray doesn’t get out much. If he spent much time with the strawmen and women he sets up—the rappers, trash-talkers, single mothers, and Simpsons viewers who have taken a power grinder to our values—he’d find how conservative they really are. Practically every rebel I know eventually cleans up his act, spawns, turns as conservative as Goldberg to defend his tender little flowers, marries a dentist, and moves. Where? To boring-as-hell McMansions!
Finally, guess who Murray sticks the blame to for the “collapse of the code of the elites”? I quote:
Bill Clinton’s presidency, in both its conduct and in the reactions to that conduct, was a paradigmatic example of elites that have been infected by “the sickness of proletarianization.” The survival of our culture requires that we somehow contrive to get well.
The Journal editorial page almost never lets you down. The only oversight here is that they don’t pitch the bound volumes of the Whitewater coverage at the end of Murray’s column.
Hey, if you’re serious about farming out the little Goldies from the duck shed you call home, let’s do it. But be forewarned: I don’t keep kosher. Do you? I seem to recall that you’re a pork-eating Jew (my favorite variety).
Love,
Jack
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: McLean: McDonald’s Burger or D.C. Suburb?
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2001, at 2:26 PM ET
Dear Jack:
Hot shit-pit? I’m reporting you to Charles Murray. The charge: felony coarsening. (Don’t worry; I’m sure it’s pardonable.)
You know, on second thought, perhaps you shouldn’t baby sit for my children.
And give me a break, please: You cannot compare the small-children-who-dress-as-hookers ’00s to the “zoot suit jazz junkie ’40s.” Have you, by any chance, turned on the television lately? I’m canceling cable as soon as my oldest child figures out how to use the remote control. Also, I’m going to home-school. Actually, I’m not going to home-school because I don’t know math. Also, I’d go insane in two days. But I’m sympathetic to the idea.
Alas, the problem with Charles Murray—and you can read it between the lines in his current piece—is that he seems perpetually ready to blame black people for everything wrong in the world. He always seems a half-keystroke away from inserting such terms as “mongrelization of the race” into his copy.
On another subject: What’s so wrong about protecting the little “flowers” I’ve “spawned”? (Which, by the way, Jack, I believe to be a botanical impossibility.)
As for your calumnious charge that I am a pork eater: Never, never, never. Actually, in the past, I’ve had bacon, which is in fact the best-tasting food in the world, which God knew, which is why he banned us from eating it, to test our faith, which he does everyday. Me he’s testing right now by engineering this “Breakfast Table” with you, thereby subjecting me to your torrent of calumny, to which, if I were Christian like you, I would be mandated to turn the other cheek.
Interesting point about McLean you make: I haven’t been there too often (not a lot of the Tribe has settled in McLean), but, from what I do recall, its houses all seem to be Brady Bunch split-levels. (There’s a show I’d let my kids watch.) The addition of a few McMansions would make McLean marginally interesting. (Isn’t “McLean” the name of a McDonald’s hamburger? Maybe McMansions are especially appropriate for McLean.)
One more point, to wrap up the day: I’m not unsympathetic to your charge that the writing on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is only tenuously connected to any kind of observable reality, but we forget sometimes that the major, left-leaning papers have their own problems assimilating obvious truths when those truths conflict with strongly held ideological beliefs. The Israeli election today—and the sureness with which commentators are predicting imminent war now that Sharon has won—remind me of a New York Times editorial from 1981, the one in which the Times in uncharacteristically intemperate language condemned Israel for bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.
I was just on an NPR show discussing the Middle East, and judging by the phone-in questions, you’d think it was 1972. To answer your question, I don’t think I could have voted for Sharon, but I think he is right about something: The Palestinians, and the Arabs generally, have not yet reconciled themselves to the idea of Israel’s legitimacy, and nothing good will happen in the Middle East until they do.
From: Jack Shafer
Subject: Clinton and Gore’s Lovers’ Quarrel
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2001, at 8:33 AM ET
Dearest Goldberg,
Did you get a load of the Clinton-Gore lovers’ spat story in today’s Washington Post, “Clinton and Gore Clashed Over Blame for Election”? According to John F. Harris’ story, Gore “forcefully” told the president that his corn-dogging had helped botch his campaign. Clinton apparently bit his lip and then flamed Gore for not running on the administration’s record.
Only Potus and the Veep attended the session, and nobody talked to Harris on the record. Ordinarily I write a snarky press item when stories are so thoroughly blind-sourced as this one, pissing and moaning about how corrupting the whole background/not-for-attribution/off-the-record journalism is. But when the dish is this good, even I am prepared to cut a reporter all the slack he needs.
That said, did you get a gander at the sourcing? Here’s who Harris cites:
“people close to [Clinton]”
“people close to both”
“one adviser to Clinton”
“a Gore aide”
“One Democrat”
“Some Democrats who heard descriptions from one or the other of the two participants”
“one Democrat”
“Others”
“one Democrat close to Clinton and Gore”
“one adviser to the former vice president”
“Many Clinton advisers”
“A senior White House official close to Clinton”
“aides close to Clinton”
“one aide” (presumably a Clinton aide)
“many Clinton people”
“a Democrat close to both men”
“many Clinton supporters”
“one Democratic operative who has worked with both men”
“Some senior Clinton advisers”
“sources”
“One Democratic strategist” who is then re-identified as “this Clinton supporter”
Who didn’t talk on the record? Harris writes, “Jake Siewert, a spokesman for Clinton, and Kiki McLean, a spokeswoman for Gore, said their bosses would not comment on a private conversation.”
I understand that you’re not only a professional journalist but a New Yorker staff writer, a successful screenwriter, and the author of a forthcoming book, so maybe you can help me with a question I have. Did Harris talk to 40 people or four? Does it matter? Is “one Democrat” also “one aide”? Is “one adviser to the former vice president” the same guy as “one Democrat close to Clinton and Gore”?
What’s clear from a cursory reading is that President Bill’s people fueled the story. Should we expect blowback from Gore’s folks tomorrow?
In other news, how about those wacky Israelis? Should we expect Sharon’s victory lap to include a visit to Temple Mount?
Hey, it’s 11 a.m. Don’t you have to go pick up one of your many children?
Love,
Jack
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: A Kosher Radisson on the Temple Mount
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2001, at 11:29 AM ET
Dear Jack:
Sorry I’m filing so late: I was downtown, at 15th and H Street, at about 11:30 this morning when I heard the sirens. Like any former police reporter, I respond in Pavlovian fashion to flashing lights and the buzzing of helicopters, so I made my way to the White House, where I learned: Absolutely nothing, except that it is possible to flood downtown Washington with hundreds of police officers from 10 or 12 different police departments in a matter of minutes, should you wish to do so.
By the way, this overblown event—I’ve been watching the cable channels for the last 15 minutes, and you’d think someone had just crushed Laura Bush under a tank tread—served to remind me of what I consider to be among the funnier Washington oxymorons: Most prominent among the police cadres on the scene were members of the “Uniformed Division” of the Secret Service. If it’s secret, I say, then don’t wear uniforms.
As far as I’m concerned, John Harris of the Washington Post might have spoken to 400 people for his story on what you call the “lovers’ spat” between Gore and Clinton. Among the sources listed in his story are “others,” “many Clinton advisers,” and “people close to Clinton.” “Others” is pretty inclusive, don’t you think?
Let me say this in the story’s defense: John Harris is a great reporter, and he’s playing by the generally accepted rules of White House coverage.
I would expect blowback from Gore very soon; I’m sure he was blowing back, or blowing up, early this morning from his small house in Arlington County, which I believe is also the county in which you reside. Actually, according to the Times, Gore was in New York City yesterday, teaching his first class at the Columbia journalism school. This class was the subject of an appropriately snarky Felicity Barringer piece, in which she noted that the class had been declared “off the record.” An off-the-record journalism class. And the people who run the nation’s journalism schools wonder why people like us make fun of them.
But back to Arlington. (Yesterday it was McLean; today, Arlington. Perhaps tomorrow we should both file from the mall at Tyson’s Corner.)
It must be particularly horrible for Gore, living in Arlington, and not only because among his neighbors is you: It is horrible because the Clintons bought a grand house just around the corner from the vice president’s residence, the one now illegally occupied by Dick Cheney. There’s Gore, living in exile in Arlington in what probably wouldn’t even qualify as a McMansion (and Arlington isn’t even tony by the modest standards of Northern Virginia), and he reads about Hillary’s mansion right there on Embassy Row, just around the corner from what should have been Little Joey’s house by now, and. … Well, you get the picture.
By the way, Gore’s a fool, and here’s why: He’s running wild in the White House, accusing Clinton of losing the election for him, but he forgot one thing: He didn’t lose. He won. He won the popular vote, and he won the electoral vote, which was then stolen by the Republicans. It is typical of Democrats, I think, to turn on each other when they should be turning on their enemy.
On Israel, the latest rumors I’m hearing have Sharon building a Radisson—a kosher Radisson—on the Temple Mount. (Note to Muslim fanatics: I am kidding.)
Jeff
From: Jack Shafer
Subject: Washington’s Hypersecurity State
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2001, at 2:06 PM ET
Brother Goldberg,
What sort of shameless suck-up artist are you? I ask for your opinion about the stone-cold blind sourcing of a Washington Post Page One story, and you write back, “Let me say this in the story’s defense: John Harris is a great reporter, and he’s playing by the generally accepted rules of White House coverage.”
I never said he wasn’t a great reporter. Or a great American. Or that I didn’t believe his story. Now that we’ve settled that, can you can yank yourself out of bootlicking mode (you’re still smarting over the fact that the Washington Post passed you over, aren’t you) and give a substantive assessment of the story’s sourcing? I’m beginning to think that Hamas is right about you.
I, too, experienced the White House fire drill bells and whistles you mentioned in your last mail. The Imperial Death Star quality of Washington has always rankled me: Black helicopters patrolling the federal corridor; streets shut down because the president decides to motor his convoy to an upper Northwest residence for a fund-raiser; cars towed away from the scene of presidential fund-raisers because the random backseats might contain bombs. Slate’s offices are three or four blocks from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., which puts us in this loathsome National Security Police State. The feeling of lockdown ratcheted up only slightly when Lynne Cheney started to work out of an office in our building again. Secret Service agents—the truly secret ones whose identities are concealed from anybody who can’t spot the earwax-stained fiber-optic cords hanging from their lobes—mob the joint every time she visits. In fact, I just happen to occupy the very office that Lynne Cheney previously worked out of. It’s the largest Slate D.C. office. A McOffice, if you will. But even if Cheney didn’t work here, the police state feel would continue because the Mayflower Hotel is next door. (Rereading this, I sound like a whinging pom. I’m grouchy because I live in a well-kept totalitarian corridor? Please give me better material to work with next time.)
Anyway, I ignored the police sirens and sidestepped the fire department hook-and-ladder that was blocking traffic because it misnegotiated the intersection of 17th and M Streets N.W. and met my girl for lunch at the Tabard Inn. You’ve been there, I assume. It’s Washington’s idea of a charming little hotel and restaurant, but its charm works only if you stand 4 feet tall. (Every time I’m there, I expect a 4-and-a-half-foot version of Basil Fawlty to goose-step into the dining room and shout, “Duck’s off!”)
We were having a tasty lunch, and then it happened, as it has happened so many times before: A human bullhorn across the way turned it up to 11. Several hundred three-letter acronyms (TLAs) poured out of this female jackass’ mouth as she regaled her lunch companion with her division’s first quarter plans. Now, I understand that when I go to a restaurant I’m not promised the peace and quiet of my home. But why, tell me why is it that every time my girl and I dine out, we’re always seated in the proximity of a shouter? Do I bring it out in them? I seem to bring it out in you.
I was tempted to call the secret Secret Service and have them escorted out.
Hey, isn’t it time for you to pick up one of your daughters?
Love,
Jack
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: From One Self-Appointed Critic to Another
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2001, at 3:14 PM ET
Jack,
Wait a second there, putzboy. You’re blaming me for the pathetic quality of your latest rant? I gave you great material to work with. Not my fault you’re running out of steam.
And another thing: I know John Harris. I like John Harris. And you’re no John Harris.
Here is further evidence of a defect afflicting you self-appointed press critics (don’t you love when reporters, of all people, jump someone because he’s “self-appointed”? This occurs most often in stories about William Bennett, as in “William Bennett, the self-appointed morals czar …” As if the reporters who employ this slur have been sent to Washington by the voters of Orange County, or of the great state of Maine).
Oh, I was saying: You self-appointed press critics, in your desperation to find snark-worthy items on which to grind your axes, never place your criticism in any kind of context, and you seldom consider the overall reliability of the reporter who is quoting anonymous sources. I’m not much for anonymous sourcing, but I have the luxury of being a magazine reporter. In the White House pressroom, the use of anonymous sources is unavoidable. And in the hands of good reporters, such as John Harris (I love you, John!) they’re a great help to the reader.
John, if you’re reading this, could you please get me a job at the Post. Please.
A long time ago I promised myself I would no longer be goaded by Jack Shafer, but I’m going to make an exception here. (Are you in a bad mood today? Do you feel unworthy, like an impostor, because you’re occupying Lynne Cheney’s old desk?)
You state, as fact, that I’m still smarting because the Washington Post passed me over. This is not true. Not the passing over part, but the smarting part.
In 1989, I was, in fact, passed over for a permanent position on the city desk of the Washington Post. I was, at the time, filling a “temporary” slot as a police reporter (at that point, I was known as the longest-serving intern in Post history). When I asked to be considered for the permanent slot, I was taken into a glass-enclosed room by the then-city editor, who told me that the slot was reserved for a Hispanic to be named later. The Hispanic was soon named, and I was gone.
But things worked out, and you’re not going to hear any Shaferistic whining from me.
One more thing before I sign off—I was just reading an Associated Press account of the life of Robert Pickett, the gunman who gave the all-news cable channels reason to exist today. This account was, of course, pulled together in 23 minutes, and consisted of interviews with his neighbors. Pickett, a former neighbor named Beverly Buck said, “has always been a very kind and a very good person as far as I’m concerned.”
I was hoping you could do me a favor: If for some reason, I become the subject of sudden and intense media scrutiny, could you loiter in front of my house and pose as my neighbor when the reporters arrive. I was thinking you could say something like this: “Jeff hasn’t been the same since he returned from Calcutta, where he spent years assisting Mother Teresa in her service to the downtrodden. I’m not saying, God forbid, that Jeff was ever self-centered, but now, he seems to care about only the poor and the sick. Why, just the other day, he donated his remaining kidney to an ailing Hispanic reporter at the Washington Post.”
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: Sharon’s Campaign Manager, Yasser Arafat
Posted Thursday, Feb. 8, 2001, at 7:39 AM ET
Hi Jack:
I’m writing this morning under duress. Sometime last night, I came down with a 24-hour Ebola. So far, it is cleverly mimicking the symptoms of a stomach virus—I am not yet bleeding through my pores, nor are my internal organs liquefying at a fast rate of speed—but I expect these developments to occur at any time, so I’ll write quick.
I opened my Times this morning and read, “A senior aide to Mr. Sharon, Raanan Gissin, said today that the incoming prime minister plans a Vietnam-style ‘pacification’ strategy in the Palestinian territories, forcibly ‘separating the terrorists from the civilian population.’ “
If it worked once, why wouldn’t it work again?
Jack, you’re scouring the newspapers right now: Have you come across anything more ridiculous than that?
On the other hand, some of the Jerusalem-based beat reporters for the major dailies are doing fairly superficial, even biased jobs explaining the meaning of Sharon’s victory. In one maddening story, Mary Curtius of the Los Angeles Times writes, “even as Sharon welcomed what an aide called a ‘warm’ message of congratulations from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, the hawkish former general also paid a visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, where he promised that the city will remain the capital of the Jewish people ‘for all eternity.’ “
In other words, the newly elected prime minister of the Jewish state had the temerity to visit Judaism’s holiest site and then promise that the Jewish capital will remain Jewish.
Tom Friedman has the most interesting piece today on the Middle East. “(T)he press is asking exactly the wrong question about the Sharon election,” Friedman wrote. “They’re asking, who is Ariel Sharon? The real question is, who is Yasir Arafat?”
Yasser Arafat, I’ve stated in another venue, served, in effect, as Sharon’s campaign manager. Arafat’s unwillingness to make compromises with the man Friedman calls Israel’s de Gaulle—Ehud Barak—is directly responsible for the ascension of Sharon.
I would love to chat on with you, but I must proceed immediately to Ft. Detrick’s Level Four biocontainment facility. If I don’t make it out, tell Pam I’ve promised you my Neil Diamond CDs.
Your friend,
Jeff
From: Jack Shafer
Subject: Science Experiment: Serving Dinner on the Kitchen Floor
Posted Thursday, Feb. 8, 2001, at 11:33 AM ET
Dear Goldberg,
Whoa! A dual gastrointestinal event of Richter proportions! How did you know that I love talking about intestinal distress? Especially the rusty gutbucket version caused by food poisoning. While visiting Seattle over Thanksgiving, I wolfed a chunk of what turned out to be incredibly ripe salmon, possibly shot through with vibrio vulnificus, a vicious bacteria that can kill you if your immune system is compromised or you’re already almost dead. (Other things that can kill you if you’re already almost dead: a 44-magnum bullet to the head; head-on motorcycle collision; hand grenade ingestion.)
I’ll avoid graphic descriptions of my illness out of respect for our readers, but I nearly passed out in the bathroom and ended up in a sweating heap on the cold tile floor. I could hear my muscle tissues separating from my skeleton. It was like an acid trip.
You just made me promise over the phone that I would avoid mentioning any food because just the thought of eating disgusts. In the interest of goading you, our theme of the week, I must abandon that pledge. So here goes: mash potatoes and gravy; orange Popsicles; chocolate malt balls; Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano cookies; Sierra Nevada Pale Ale; Sweet Tarts; Easter Peeps. Are you spewing yet? Dry heaves, maybe?
While we’re on the subject of stomachquakes—come to think of it, Lynne Cheney’s Secret Service detail would have to gang-tackle me to remove me from the subject—did you see medical paranoid Jane E. Brody’s Tuesday New York Times Health section screed about when good food goes bad? Brody drags all the biological culprits in for a lineup: escherichia coli o157:h7, listeria monocytogenes, salmonella, norwalk and norwalklike viruses, campylobacter jejuni, and our good friend vibrio vulnificus. You told me over the phone that you think the disease vectors that you call your children might have given you the flu. But I’m guessing that Miss Pamela, your fetching bride, Pamela, slipped you a bacteria cocktail in your meatloaf last night. Send the entire meal to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for bioanalysis.
Or, stave off sickness by sandblasting your cutting board. Medical paranoid Brody alleged last month that a single clean cutting board is not enough to ward off food contamination. You must maintain two cutting boards, one for meat and one for everything else. “Wash under rings and fingernails; use a nail brush if necessary.” She continues:
While millions of consumers worry about pesticide residues and additives in foods, the real hazards lie in microbial contamination and improper food handling, especially in the home.
The rest of the article reads like a science project: Consume poultry only after it has been bombarded with 1.5 million rads of gamma radiation; wash your hands in sulphuric acid after going to the bathroom; cook both beef and pork to a flaky, dark crust; eat your meals with sterilized dental instruments.
Brody means well, but I’m afraid that she doesn’t understand that the human organism was built to live in a toxic environment. Most people learn that we are not delicate flowers when they have children. They quickly abandon their cleanliness phobias and start feeding their children the food that they’ve thrown on the floor. Come to think of it, wouldn’t that be a great science project? Mother Goldberg serves an entire meal on the kitchen floor, and her husband and three children lap it up like dogs. Do they get sick or not?
You threatened over the phone that you might be too sick to continue with this “Breakfast Table.” If that’s the case, you have my sympathy. But can your fetching bride, Pamela, finish the correspondence if you retire to the permanently disabled list?
Get well. But not too well. I like hitting a guy when he’s down.
Love,
Jack
From: Jeffrey Goldberg
Subject: Home-Schooling Kids To Avoid Germs
Posted Friday, Feb. 9, 2001, at 8:48 AM ET
Dear Jack,
Well, it wasn’t Ebola that was dragging me down. It seems instead to have been some prosaic winter bug. I’m sure you’re sorry to hear that because now you can’t dine out on “My friend Goldberg had Ebola” stories for the next century.
I’m still a little dizzy, a little sapped, a little wrung-out, tapped dry—you get the picture, but if I’m not mistaken, did you state in your last e-mail that you were philosophically opposed to washing your hands? Were you attacking Jane Brody of the New York Times for advocating same?
Let me tell you something—and I say this at the risk of sounding Donald Trumpish (if you recall, it is Trump’s position that hands are, generally speaking, too dirty to shake)—but, THE PATHOGENS ARE EVERYWHERE! They’re colonizing your home, your mouth, your gut, right now!
OK, I’m a little bug-phobic at the moment. By the way, this is why I’m for home-schooling: The only reason I’m sick is because I foolishly allow my children to attend a nursery school in which there are other children present. When, God willing, you become a parent, you will quickly learn that it is always someone else’s child who introduced the disease-of-the-week into the school environment.
I haven’t done much reading this morning, mostly because I can’t yet see straight, but if I understand the large-type headlines, I think I’m about to receive a $1.6 trillion tax break, which is excellent, because now I’ll be able to afford a roof-rack for my mini-van.
Did I tell you, by the way, that I chucked the Ford Explorer, and replaced it with a Honda Odyssey? Initially, I tried to sell the Explorer for money, but, when that didn’t work, I parked it outside Carmax in the middle of the night and left a note on the windshield: “Please take in my poor Ford Explorer. I can longer support him. God bless you.”
Then I spent about $80,000 for the Odyssey. I’m sure it’s only a matter of weeks before we read about the tires on Hondas exploding in startling numbers.
I fear leaving you with the last word, but I have to go now and nap, and I don’t plan on waking up until Tuesday.
It’s been marginally enjoyable, this “Breakfast Table.” We should do it again. But don’t even think about eating at my house until we see a marked improvement in your standards of personal hygiene.
Best,
Jeff
From: Jack Shafer
Subject: Sentenced to Life With a Minivan
Posted Friday, Feb. 9, 2001, at 11:48 AM ET
Dearest Goldberg,
Do you remember when you and the very pregnant Miss Pamela and your two little Goldies came over to my house last summer for bagels and lox and you mewled about the plan to ditch the Explorer for the Odyssey? You, the Ultimate Manly Man, evicted from a tough-ass’ SUV for a life sentence in a sissy-ass’ minivan? (As I recall, we discussed this before news reports revealed the Explorer to be a death trap.) My view was that minivans are incredibly cool, but that if you got one you should slam it.
No, not drive it into a wall. “Slamming” means aggressively customizing your Honda (the way that West Coast kids do) until it’s a high-performance rice-rocket: Trick out the engine; install a beastly exhaust system; replace the stock red tail lights with clear ones (and red bulbs!); lower the frame; cherry-out the paint job; install ground effects; skinnify the tires; and prettify the interior. In short, trade a rollover death trap for an automotive bullet that kills in much more interesting ways. I haven’t seen a slammed Odyssey yet, but you could start a trend in your yuppie D.C. neighborhood and simultaneously preserve your manhood. I’m sure Pamela will approve, as slamming rarely costs more than $10,000 or $20,000.
I’m very happy to see that I wrote you into a gastrointestinal event this week. Taunting you from afar, though, wasn’t as fun as provoking you in person, but it proved much more deadly. If you’re still alive when you read this, please call or e-mail. We need to go out cruising in your new dream machine pronto.
Love,
Jack